Nuclear treaties are key to a saner world

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In the fall of 1962, the world witnessed a 13-day standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union often called the Cuban Missile Crises.

The crises led to a realization, on both sides of the Cold War struggle, that the geopolitical tug-of-war should be kept out of the nuclear sphere. So, the United States — along with Soviet Russia — engaged in a certain amount of nuclear arms control. Our country, as well as Soviet Russia, were among the countries that signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty under President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1968. The agreement committed signees to reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. Under President Richard Nixon, our country signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972. This limited both our country and Soviet Russia in the number of anti-ballistic missile systems each side could possess. Under President Ronald Reagan, our country entered the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The treaty limited the United States’ and Soviet Russia’s land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of 500 to 1,000 kilometers. In 2015, our country and Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to control Iran’s nuclear arsenal under President Barack Obama.

While there were still plenty of nuclear arms in the world, our country — in cooperation with political foes — limited the number of nuclear arms in the world. Now for the bad part of the story! President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. Obama decided to upgrade our nuclear arsenal, a move continued to a greater extent by President Donald Trump. Both Obama and Trump violated the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Trump withdrew from the both the JCPOA and the INF Treaty.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, a 2011 treaty signed by Obama that reduced the number of strategic missile launchers of both the United States and Russia by half, will expire this year. Some say President Trump will not renew the treaty. This means there are no further arms control treaties to reduce the arsenals of our county and Russia. What will this lead to? It will most likely lead to a power-balancing act where the United States and Russia engage in an arms race. Both sides will spend millions on nuclear arms.

Our country should do more to ensure its own domestic strength and doesn’t need a nuclear arms race. We should extend the New Start Treaty. This could be the start of a new spirit of cooperation to ensure a world with no nuclear weapons. More treaties could follow. The book by former President Herbert Hoover and former diplomat Hugh Gibson titled “The Problem of Lasting Peace” (1942) gives us a blueprint. The two envisioned a world where regional powers cooperated to build international law and reduce the number of arms in the world. Regional powers would confine themselves to securing their own region and not spend time and money on geopolitical balancing because they agree on a set of rules. Russia, ruled by the authoritarian Vladimir Putin, is certainly not a light in the world of democracy. However, Putin’s Russia is a regional power at most. In the future, Russia could help in the enforcement of laws limiting the number of nuclear weapons in the world. In time, Russia might move toward a system of Western democracy. What path will we follow in the current volatile political environment?